The Syrian opposition still
controls some of northern Syria, areas which have been pummelled by
the government (AFP)
Canada and the Netherlands are taking Syria to the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) over claims that the
government of President Bashar al-Assad engaged in torture against
its people.
In their application to the court, the two countries accused
Syria of having committed "countless violations of international
law".
"These violations include the use of torture and other cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment including through
abhorrent treatment of detainees, inhumane conditions in places of
detention, enforced disappearances, the use of sexual and
gender-based violence, and violence against children," they said in
a statement released by the ICJ.
The use of chemical weapons in the war in
Syria, which began after an uprising in 2011, was also
specifically mentioned in the application, described as a
"particularly abhorrent practice to intimidate and punish the
civilian population".
While the Syrian government has denied the use of chemical
weapons, and claimed that the country's opposition used them,
the government has been blamed for the use of such
internationally banned weapons on several occasions, including in
January by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons.
A member of the Syrian
Kurdish Asayish security forces stands guard at the Kurdish-run
al-Hol camp on 28 August 2022 (AFP)
The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria said on
Sunday that it would start the process of trying thousands of
suspected foreign Islamic State (IS) fighters after years of
holding them without charge.
The announcement caught international diplomats by surprise, but
the Kurdish-led administration cited the refusal by the
international community to take back their own citizens and try
them in their respective countries as a reason for the move.
The US-backed Kurdish
administration, which operates outside the control of the central
government in Damascus, holds up to 10,000 suspected IS detainees
and their families.
The fighters are kept in detention facilities while the
families, including children, are kept in camps.
In a statement the Kurdish administration said that it
would submit detainees to its own "open, free and transparent
trials".
"Since the first days following the battle of Baghouz, the
Autonomous Administration called on the international community to
fulfil its duties regarding finding a solution for the captured
ISIS militants," read...
Back in the days when I was still considered safe enough to have
my own Me column in the Spectator, my brother Dick bumped into one
of my more red-pilled fans at a party and got a bit of feedback.
Tell your brother hes right on quite a lot of things, but he still
has some way to go before he gets to the bottom of everything!
Like what? I asked Dick indignantly, for even then I considered
myself an-honest-to-God, without-fear-or-favour
seeker-after-truth.
He says youre wrong on 9/11 for a start, reported Dick.
OK. Well where am I supposed to look?
Apparently its all down to Building 7. You need to look into
Building 7.
OK, I said. Ill look into Building 7.
But of course I never did. Well not properly. Certainly not
enough to experience the Road to Damascus moment that so many in
the red-pilled community imagine is going to happen when you utter
those two talismanic words Building and Seven.
Some of them were at it again after a recent episode of London
Calling, the weekly podcast in which I try unsuccessfully to
persuade my good friend Toby Young that it really is a conspiracy
not a cock up. You should have mentioned Building 7, one of them
said. He presented you with an open goal but you didnt mention
Building 7, said another.
No I didnt mention Building 7. Deliberately so. For Building 7
is not the magic bullet so many of its proponents imagine it to
be.
Obviously now that I am down the rabbit hole, I understand the
significance of Building 7. Its the one that collapsed by itself
without having been hit by either of the two (alleged) hijacked
aeroplanes. This, according to Truthers, offers cast iron proof
that the whole 9/11 operation was an inside job. If Building 7 was
brought down by demolition charges and it clearly wasnt brought
down by aeroplanes doesnt this call into question the entirety of
the rest of the official narrative?
Well yes it does. But only if you are in the right mindset.
I refer you to my example from the beginning. When I first
looked into Building 7 I was still in my Normie phase. Even as I
glanced cursorily at the details my mind was already making excuses
as to why they didnt matter: untrustworthiness of the websites
propounding them; unreliability of witnesses; sheer outrageousness
of the very notion that the US authorities might wish to wage war
on their own people; etc.
If you are emotionally and intellectually invested in the Normie
paradigm which is also the mainstream paradigm, and the one to
which the vast majority of people subscribe then no amount of
killer information is going to sway you.
As Ive said before, you are never going to truth bomb Normies
into awakeness.
And its not necessarily because they are stupid, or compromised,
as we Awa...
Far right Israeli lawmaker
Itamar Ben Gvir near Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem, 10
June 2021 (Reuters)
Six former Israeli police chiefs and 42 deputy police
commissioners have called on Israel's Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire his far-right coalition ally
Itamar Ben Gvir from his post as national security
minister.
In a letter published on Friday, the former police
chiefs warned that Ben Gvir poses "a tangible and immediate
danger to the security of the State of Israel".
The letter to Netanyahu, who heads one of Israel's
most right-wing governments in history, accuses Ben Gvir
of playing a "central part" to the problems facing the police
force, and says his tenure as minister could lead to the "collapse
of the Israeli police".
The police chiefs also asked Netanyahu for
a meeting without Ben-Gvir's presence to "present
proposals that would strengthen the police force" and "expand on
the factors that led to this situation".
Since taking office six months
ago, Ben Gvir has repeatedly attempted to exert political
influence on the police force and clashed publicly with Police
Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.
'I
have lost my father, my brothers, and I spent three
years in these prison cells, but even so, this revolution is worth
making: we have monsters in power.
When they arrest you and take you to prison, they interrogate
you and ask you questions that are impossible to answer. For
example, how many police officers have you killed in your life. I
answered none. Not just because I didnt kill any, but because none
had died. But under torture they forced me to say that I had killed
policemen, in order to designate me as a criminal and a terrorist.
I was 15 years old. And while you are being tortured, you hear
other prisoners begging to be killed due to the pain they are
suffering.
I was in prison 215, in Damascus. My assignment was to move
the corpses of the dead prisoners to the room where their deaths
were certified. You are in shock. You dont understand whats going
on. How is it possible for a guard who looks like a father to treat
you like this? But, being so young, you are more likely to adapt to
the situation. There is a routine.
You got up at 4 a.m. Then they forced you to remove the
corpses. They fed you, once a day. You went to the bathroom. Then
they tortured you. And then you had 14 more hours in the cell with
other prisoners. They werent criminals, they were good people. On
the right, you might have a doctor who helps you heal the wounds.
On the left, a psychologist who helps you too. Opposite from you, a
lawyer and a professor. If you spend three days in prison, you dont
worry about learning anything. But if you spend years in prison,
you have to adapt, you have to learn.
I had tuberculosis, I weighed 34 kilos. My mother bribed the
guards and judges with a lot of money to get me out of prison. They
took me to Turkey and from there I went to Greece by boat and then
to Sweden, where I got medical treatment. I was arrested for the
first time at 15, released shortly afterwards, a...
'As
soon as we crossed the border into Syria, the fields of
olive trees stretched as far my eyes could see. Row after row,
until we reached Atmeh. Over the past 12 years of conflict, what
was formerly a village has grown into a town, with a mixture of
permanent buildings and tents spilling down the hillsides.
Our destination was Aqrabat Hospital, where I was leading a
surgical mission to train local doctors and provide specialist
orthopaedic and plastic surgical care to survivors of Februarys
devastating earthquake.
The need is astonishing. After hearing that specialist
doctors were visiting, 2,000 patients had travelled to the hospital
over the previous week. In the rooms above the operation theatres,
doctors are trained in skills to enable them to manage complex
trauma injuries, whether inflicted by earthquakes or the ongoing
conflict.
Aqrabat sits in Syrias northwest, a region sustained by a
remarkable network of civil society organisations and NGOs, yet one
that is also uniquely vulnerable. The hospital is among a network
that serves a population of around four million, the majority of
whom are dependent on humanitarian aid.
Some 2.6 million of those residents have already been
forcibly displaced from their homes several times before by the
conflict, from places we remember as headlines from years ago:
Ghouta, Daraa, Homs, Aleppo. People have faced a series of crises
including food and fuel shortages and a cholera outbreak.
Northwest Syria is the last territorial outpost of the Syrian
Revolution and its quasi-independence is a source of irritation for
the rgime of President Bashar Assad, whose goal is to enforce his
governments rule over the whole of Syria again.
What protection the northwest had is being eroded at speed as
the United Arab Emirates welcomed Assad to Abu Dhabi in March, and
Jordan, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia have indicated a willingness to
resume diplomatic ties with Damascus. On Sunday, the Arab League
began the process of allowing Sy...
Terrorists remotely detonated a car bomb outside a polices
station in Barzeh, north of Damascus, on Wednesday morning, 10 May.
Police officer Lieutenant Colonial Sharaf
'Hundreds
of Syrians protested Sunday in the rebel northwestern
city of
Idlib against a thawing of ties between several Arab countries
and President Bashar al-Assad's rgime.
"We have come today to reject normalisation with this
murderous, criminal, terrorist rgime," said Fahad Abdel Karim,
49.
"We came to send a message to the whole world that with this
normalisation, you will gain Bashar al-Assad the criminal, and you
will lose the Syrian people," said Abdel Salam Mohammed Yussef, who
heads a camp for displaced people.
Several hundred Syrians, some displaced from other parts of
the country by the 12-year war, took part in the protest.
Assad has been politically isolated in
the region since the war began in 2011, when the Syrian president
launched a brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters. Consequently,
around
500,000 Syrians have been killed, with millions more
displaced.
However,
the devastating February 6 earthquake that struck Syria and
neighbouring Turkey which killed thousands sparked Arab outreach,
notably from the UAE.
A flurry of diplomatic activity has also been underway in
past weeks as Middle East rivals Saudi Arabia and the Syrian
government's ally
Iran patched up ties last month, shifting regional
relations.
On Tuesday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan
met with Assad in Damascus on the first trip by a Saudi official
since the conflict began, less than a week after Syria's top
diplomat Faisal Mekdad visited the Gulf kingdom.
'An anonymous
witness, described as aSyrianwho witnessed and was forced to
dig mass graves on orders from the Bashar al-Assad government,
urged a congressional hearing on Tuesday to help pressure regional
Arab countries from normalising with the Assad
government.
In a hearing hosted by the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee
on the Middle East, the Syrian witness called on the administration
of US President Joe Biden to strengthen American sanctions on
Assad.
"The Syrian people look to the United States to ensure that
there are consequences for those who normalise with the criminal
rgime," said the witness, who attended the hearing virtually.
The witness told the room of US lawmakers that he was forced
by Syrian authorities to be a gravedigger for the Assad
government.
"I was not prepared for the horror of my new duties. Every
week, twice a week, three trailer trucks are rock packed with 300
to 600 bodies of victims of torture and starvation and execution
from military hospitals and intelligence branches around Damascus,"
he said.
Twice a week we received three to four pickup trucks with 30
to 40 bodies, still warm, of civilians that had been executed in
Sednaya prison. After seven years of bearing witness to these
atrocities, I was able to escape Syria and follow my family to
Europe.
The congressional witness called on the US to pledge not to
re-establish relations with Assad, and to strengthen the existing
sanctions rgime currently in place against Damascus.
"It is vital that the law is implemented to its fullest
extent to hinder the region's chances of benefiting...
The establishment cares more about its anti-Assad narrative than
reality. Much like the establishment cares more about its
anti-Putin narrative than reality.
' The war changed womens lives in
Syria,
says Amina Abdullmajid Albish. Most
women lost their husbands, the breadwinners, so they were
forced to take on more responsibility. They had to support their
family and work, she said from her home in Idlib province,
northwest Syria, where the 34-year-old runs one of The White Helmets womens
centres.
Her husband survived, but was arrested twice by
Bashar al-Assads forces. She had to bribe them for his release
after they forced him to join the military. They fled to the
capital, Damascus, after their village in Idlib was captured by the
rgime forces. She describes almost being shot while doing laundry
on the roof of her home.
They only returned to Idlib once anti-government rebels took
the province, which is now the last rebel-held territory.
Every day after preparing her five children for school, she
goes to work in the centre, where her main task is providing
medical aid for the women who come in on a daily basis.
Over a month since the
devastating twin earthquakes struck the region, exacerbating an
already dire situation in a country where conflict has been raging
for 12 years and 90 per cent of the population live under the
poverty line, her job is essential.
Following the devastating
earthquakes that rocked Trkiye, Syria and their neighboring
countries on February 6, leaving more than 20,000 dead, Damascus is
struggling to deal with this unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe
as it remains under brutal Western sanctions that have brought the
country to its knees.
The Wests war on Syria that began
in early 2011 failed to topple its elected president, but the
subsequent years of increasingly cruel sanctions all in the name of
helping the Syrian people have succeeded in rendering life
miserable and near impossible, with most unable to afford to
properly feed their families, much less heat their
homes.
Now, in a time of crisis, the
Syrian people cannot even receive donations or emergency support
from abroad....
'Where to look first? The sheer beauty of
the old stones, their soft hues of golden limestone, the deep
pinkish red of the local marble, the fierce contrast with the harsh
black volcanic basalt that ran in alternating bands round the
courtyard walls. It took me by surprise. The elaborate stone
patterns continued in the courtyard floor, gently polished by the
wear of centuries.'
[p5]
'A ray of hope appeared. Weirdly, unexpectedly, something
changed in Damascus. By late afternoon on Friday, 13 April [2012],
the entire mood of the city had lifted. In the morning the news had
carried footage from the rgime's TV station claiming there had been
an explosion at the ruling Ba'ath Party Headquarters, but when we
went to look there was nothing to be seen. Sound bombs became a
common scare tactic, or bombs without a detonator, like the one the
rgime sent through the walls of the Sydnaya Monastery to frighten
the nuns. When nothing exploded this time in Damascus or Aleppo, we
all hoped there might be a sea change. Where were all these armed
groups, the jihadis and al-Qaeda elements the media loved to talk
about? At that stage my friends dismissed their existence in any
serious numbers. This had been true, back in April 2012.
But it was just a pause, tragically brief, and the opportunity was
squandered. The rgime broke off from its killing spree, looked up
to take stock of the world's reaction, realised there was no
unified voice, and continued in its single-minded aim - to crush
the opposition. It was on the way to self-destruction. Addicted to
power, oblivious to all pleas to change course, in denial about the
size and nature of the problem, it would almost certainly have to
reach its own personal rock-bottom, like all addicts, before things
could improve.'
[pp11-13]
The Syrian Center for Policy research Consumer Price Index in
Syria provides a complex index to monitor and analyse consumer
prices, inflation and the #cost of living at the level of
local economies in all Syrian governorates across the different
areas of control. It is the outcome of two years of continuous work
surveying prices in Syria.
Friday 14th of October,
2022
5:00 to 7:00 pm Damascus time
The research team will present the research methodology and
principal findings. A commentary and Q&A session with
participants will follow.
Watch the event live streaming here:
The Hope under Siege research aims at assessing each of the
challenges that adolescents in Syria encounter in relation to
education and ICT. The research assessed the realisation of
adolescent girls and boys rights, and analysed key aspects of
gender-based inequalities and abuses. It used qualitative methods
to assess the immediate, underlying and structural causes of any
lack and/or violations of girls and boys rights in the armed
conflict context.
To read the full report please visit the research page
here
The Hope under Siege research aims at assessing each of the
challenges that adolescents in Syria encounter in relation to
education and ICT. The research assessed the realisation of
adolescent girls and boys rights, and analysed key aspects of
gender-based inequalities and abuses. It used qualitative methods
to assess the immediate, underlying and structural causes of any
lack and/or violations of girls and boys rights in the armed
conflict context.
The research has developed a blended mixed- methods research
methodology that is innovative, participatory, and gender-sensitive
within the context of ongoing conflict in Syria. The research
adopted in-depth consultations with adolescents using
age-appropriate innovative interactive methods, allowing them to
express themselves and their perspectives through collective
activities like discussions, writing, drawing etc. The activities
were designed to understand and analyse key challenges, needs,
threats, and rights violations. Causes and factors that are
affecting adolescents as well as key advantages and aspirations,
options and intervention areas. The research also included
semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with key
informants, parents and caregivers in the study areas.
The participatory approach was achieved by recruiting
researchers, facilitators and note takers from the local studied
communities and selecting diverse and wide samples of female and
male adolescents and adults to participate. After the random
selection of the final sample, the consultations were conducted
with 642 girls and boys aged (13-18) years old from 11 different
areas in Syria (Idleb, Aleppo, Al-Bab, Homs, Tartous,
Damascus, East Ghouta, Al-Tall, Al-Sweida, Raqqa). The sample of
adolescents included participants from rural and urban areas, in
and out of schools, internally displaced (IDPs) and host
communities, orphaned, disabled, working and/or married.
The research team prioritised assuring that the research design
and implementation were in line with high standards for research
ethics. And Special attention was given to the sensitivities of
conducting research in a conflict context, with adolescents and
children, with girls and boys, and under COVID-19 circumstances. It
ensured respecting the privacy and the effective participation of
adolescents and their communities in developing the research and
engaging with the dialogue about the results.
Adolescents, caregivers and key informants told of severe losses
of the education system during the conflict. First, fragmented
education systems have emerged over the last decade, categorised by
distorted and politicised governance, lack of qualified teachers,
different curricula, and poor quality. Second, infrastructure and
equipment have been subject to severe destruction or used for other
purposes such as shelters for IDPs. Third, siege and discrimination
policies further restricte...
Hans von Sponeck, former UN Assistant
Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator
(Iraq).
[Originally published
in German by Die Informationsstelle Militarisierung (IMI) e.V.
This translation is based on the Google Translate
version.]
On February 5, 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell
presented CIA images from Iraq to the United Nations Security
Council to testify that the Iraqi government continued to possess
weapons of mass destruction. Statements by UNMOVIC, the United
Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, that
there was no evidence of this, were ignored. Six weeks later,
Operation Iraqi Freedom, the illegal war waged by the United States
and United Kingdom, began.
There are similar reports about Syria, with the difference that
it is not a government providing the alleged evidence, but the
OPCW, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an
international body based in The Hague.
On April 7, 2018, Douma, a city of 100,000 people not far from
Damascus, was allegedly attacked with chemical weapons. The OPCW
responded by dispatching a team of scientists who concluded in
their investigative report that 43 people reportedly killed in the
attack were unlikely to have died from chemical weapons. Experts
from the OPCW Douma team discovered that instead of this report,
the OPCW management intended to publish a falsified report stating
that chemical weapons had been used. This deception was prevented
by OPCW scientists. Eventually, however, the final report contained
manipulated accounts of the attack and unscientific conclusions
regarding the chemical substances found, the demonstrated
toxicology and the ballistics.
Furthermore, the OPCW relied on the statements of only one of
the two groups of contemporary witnesses who had been identified.
This was a group of Syrian refugees who had been interviewed in
Turkey with the help of the White Helmets.[1] The second group of witnesses were mostly
medical workers in Damascus who said they were working at the
hospital at the time victims of the alleged chemical weapons attack
were seeking medical help. The testimonies of this group of
witnesses indicated that dust and fume inhalation, but not chemical
poisoning, was the cause of the patients discomfort. These
important statements were not referred to in the OPCW report.
However, the account of the witnesses interviewed by the White
Helmets is highlighted in the OPCW report. These reported
testimonies were accepted without the possibility of examination,
even though the testimonies were often contradictory, especially
with re...
Damascus, 31 May 2018 ~ President Bashar al-Assad has said that
with every move forward for the Syrian Army, and for the political
process, and for the whole situation, forward in the positive
meaning, towards more stability, our enemies and our opponents,
mainly the West led by the United States and their puppets in
Europe and the region, with their mercenaries in Syria, they try to
make it farther, either by supporting more terrorism, bringing more
terrorists to Syria, or by hindering the political process. In an
interview given to RT, President al-Assad added that after the
liberation of Aleppo and later Deir Ezzor, and before that Homs,
and now Damascus, actually the United States is losing its cards
where the main card was al-Nusra that was called moderate. But when
the scandal started leaking, that al-Nusra is part of Al Qaida that
was supposed to be fought by the United States, they looked for
another card. This card is the SDF now. President al-Assad said:
Were going to deal with SDF by two options: the first one, we
started now opening doors for negotiations, this is the first
option. If not, were going to resort to liberating by force, to
liberating those areas by force. We dont have any other options,
with the Americans or without the Americans. The Americans should
leave; somehow theyre going to leave. They came to Iraq with no
legal basis, and look what happened to them. They have to learn the
lesson. Iraq is no exception, and Syria is no exception. People
will not accept foreigners in this region anymore, President
al-Assad added. Full Video-Interview in English (Arabic subtitled)
Full transcript of the interview
<p>Damascus, 10 May 2018 President Bashar al-Assad said
that France, Britain, and the US, along with Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
and Turkey are responsible for the war in Syria due to their
support of the terrorism, describing the Western allegations about
the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Arab Army as a farce and
a very primitive play whose only goal is to attack the Syrian Army
after the defeat of terrorists. In an interview given to the Greek
Kathimerini newspaper, President al-Assad said that Syria is
fighting terrorists, who are the army of the Turkish, US, and Saudi
regimes, stressing that any aggressor and any army, whether
Turkish, French, or whoever, they are all enemies as long as they
came to Syria illegally.... ... ... (FULL TEXT, PHOTOS &
VIDEO)
Witnesses of the alleged chemical attack in Douma, including
11-year-old Hassan Diab and hospital staff, told reporters at The
Hague that the White Helmets video used as a pretext for a US-led
strike on Syria was, in fact, staged. We were at the basement and
we heard people shouting that we needed to go to a hospital. We
went through a tunnel. At the hospital they started pouring cold
water on me, the boy told the press conference, gathered by
Russias mission at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague. Hassan was among the victims
seen being washed by water hoses in a video released by the
controversial White Helmets group on April 7. The boy and his
family later spoke to the media and revealed that Hassan was
hurried to the scene by men who claimed that a chemical attack had
taken place. They started pouring cold water on the boy and others,
filming the frightened children. There were people unknown to us
who were filming the emergency care, they were filming the chaos
taking place inside, and were filming people being doused with
water. The instruments they used to douse them with water were
originally used to clean the floors actually, Ahmad Kashoi, an
administrator of the emergency ward, recalled. That happened
for about an hour, we provided help to them and sent them home. No
one has died. No one suffered from chemical exposure.... ...
...
.jpg?itok=p1WIU24r)
.jpg?itok=uIytKmOS)
Jan. 19
. 2023
5-7pm
(Damascus time) | 3-5pm (CET)
Online
via Zoom
Arabic
and English